A walking tour of Swift’s Dublin with Dr. Brendan Twomey

The walking tour (about two hours in duration) will commence with a visit to Marsh’s Library. The library, built in 1707, was frequented by Swift and we will look at the Gulliver @ 300 exhibition currently on show in the library. The tour will then visit a series of neighbouring sites associated with Swift such as the Cabbage Patch, Long Lane, St Kevin’s Church, the Gulliver’s Travels terracotta roundels in Golden Lane, and St Patrick’s Park. The tour will finish by viewing the numerous Swift associated monuments in St Patrick’s Cathedral where Swift was dean for over thirty years. Throughout the tour your guide will recount the numerous colourful stories, of varying reliability!, associated with Swift and this historic part of Dublin.

About Dr Brendan Twomey

Dr. Brendan Twomey is a retired banker. In 2018 he completed his PhD in TCD, Personal Financial Management in Early Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Practices, participants, and outcomes, under the supervision of Prof. David Dickson. His publications include two forthcoming essays A 1742 inventory of Jonathan Swift’s household goods and chattels, in Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, and Debtor imprisonment in eighteenth-century Ireland in David Hayton and Ciarán Mac Murchaidh (eds) Improvement and nationhood: essays in Irish history, c. 1730-c. 1850 presented to James Kelly.

Previous publications include ‘the receiver-general is not in cash to pay …’ The financial travails of Dublin Corporation, 1690-1760, causes, actions and political impact’ in Politics and political culture in Ireland from Restoration to Union, 1660-1800(2022), ‘House refurbishment in mid-eighteenth-century Dublin’ in Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, Vol. xxiv, (2021), Sir John T. Gilbert: life, works and contexts (2013) and Financing Speculative Property Development in early eighteenth-century Dublin (2010).

He has published three volumes in the Maynooth Studies in Local History; The perjury trial of Patrick Hurly of Moughna, Co. Clare; Elite Catholic responses to the emerging Protestant ascendancy (2024), Dublin in 1707: A year in the life of the city (2010) and Smithfield and the parish of St Paul: 1698-1745 (2004). His current research interests are focussed on celebrating the 300th anniversary of the publication of Gulliver’s Travels, first published in 1726, and on continuing his research into the financial and legal affairs of Jonathan Swift.

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